also depicts the Assyrian warriors as roaring lions (Is 5:29) and Yahweh as a lion who will tear up His prey and carry it off to His lair (Hos 5:14, 15; 13:7, 8; Johnston 2001:294, 295).Ashurbanipal pouring out a libation on the lions (left) and Ashurbanipal holding a lion by the tail during a lion hunt. Note the defacement of the tail on the right.From the palace of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh, now in the British Museum.According to Ashurbanipal’s annals, at the beginning of his reign, two deities, Adad and Ea, blessed the land of Assyria with plenty of rain. This rain caused the forests to thrive and the reeds in the marshes to flourish. This blessing resulted in a population explosion among the lions. They exerted their influence in the hills and on the plain by attacking herds of cattle, flocks of sheep and people. Many were killed (Luckenbill 1989, 2:363, ¶ 935). Ashurbanipal II, following in the footsteps of his predecessors, took charge of the lion hunts in order to control the lion population (Luckenbill 1989, 2:392, ¶ 1025).Ashurbanipal also engaged in lion hunting as a sport. Apparently lions were captured alive and put in cages in the king’s garden in Nineveh and used for staged lion hunts (Weissert 1997:339–58). One relief that was found in Ashurbanipal’s palace at Nineveh, apparently from a second floor, had three panels depicting a lion hunt. On the top panel, a lion is released from a cage and Ashurbanipal is shooting him with arrows. The central panel is interesting because it shows the bravery of the king. On the right side of the panel, soldiers are distracting a lion. On the left side, Ashurbanipal sneaks up and grabs the lion by the tail as he rears to his hind legs. The inscription above says,I, Ashurbanipal, king of the universe, king of Assyria, in my lordly sport, I seized a lion of the plain by his tail and at the command of Urta, Nergal, the gods, my allies, I smashed his skull with the club of my hand (Luckenbill 1989, 2:391, ¶ 1023).The king attributes his bravery to the deities. Dr. J. E. Reade, one of the keepers of the Western Asiatic Antiquities at the British Museum, has observed,It is notable that much of the lion’s tail has been chipped away, so that the lion had been, as it were, set loose; this defacement was probably the action, at once humorous and symbolic, of some enemy soldier busy ransacking the palace in 612 B.C. (Curtis and Reade 1995:87).On the lower panel, Ashurbanipal is pouring out a wine libation over the carcasses of four lions. In the inscription above, the king boasts of his power by saying,I, Ashurbanipal, king of the universe, king of Assyria, whom Assur and Ninlil have endowed with surpassing might. The lions which I slew, the terrible bow of Ishtar, lady of battle, I aimed at them. I brought an offering, I poured out wine over them (Luckenbill 1989, 2:392, ¶ 1021).Once again the king attributes his mighty power to the gods, in this case Assur and Ninlil.In contrast, Ashurbanipal boasts that kings and lions are powerless before him. At the beginning of one of his annals (Cylinder F) he states,Among men, kings, and among the beasts, lions (?)
were powerless before my bow, I know (the art) of waging battle and combat...
A valiant hero, beloved of Assur and Ishtar, of royal lineage, am I (Luckenbill 1989, 2:347, ¶ 896).Dead bodies of the Assyrian enemies (left).The top body has its eyes being plucked out by a vulture, while the bottom body is beheaded. Assyrians forcing their enemies to grind the bones of their dead ancestors (right).Ashurbanipal has tied his lion hunting and military conquests together in one statement.In the vision of Nahum concerning Nineveh, Nahum asks a rhetorical question,Where is the dwelling of the lions, and the feeding place of the young lions, where the lion walked, the lioness and lion’s cub, and no one made them afraid? (2:11).He sees Nineveh as a lions’ den that has been destroyed and the lions are gone. The “prey” in verse 12 is apparently the booty that the Assyrians have taken from all the cities they conquered in recent memory.In verse 13, the LORD states directly,Behold, I am against you. I will burn your chariots in smoke, and the sword shall devour your young lions; I will cut off your prey from the earth, and the voice of your messenger shall be heard no more.The phrase “the sword shall devour your young lions” draws our attention to another relief showing Ashurbanipal thrusting a sword through a lion. The inscription associated with this relief says,I, Ashurbanipal, king of the universe, king of Assyria, in my lordly sport, they let a fierce lion of the plain out of the cage and on foot...I stabbed him later with my iron girdle dagger and he died (Luckenbill 1989, 2:392, ¶ 1024).The book of Nahum sets forth an ironic reversal of the Assyrian usage of the lion motif. Gordon Johnston has observed.The extended lion metaphor in Nahum 2:11–13 includes the two major varieties of the Neo-Assyrian lion motif: the depiction of the Assyrian king and his warriors as mighty lions, and the royal lion hunt theme. While the Assyrians kept these two motifs separate, Nahum dovetailed the two, but in doing so he also reversed their original significance. While the Assyrian warriors loved to depict themselves as mighty lions hunting their prey, Nahum pictured them as lions that would be hunted down. The Assyrian kings also boasted that they were mighty hunters in royal lion hunts; Nahum pictured them as the lions being hunted in the lion hunt. By these reversals Nahum created an unexpected twist on Assyrian usage. According to Nahum the Assyrians were like lions, to be sure; however, not in the way that they depicted themselves; rather than being like lions on the prowl for prey, the hunters would become the hunted! (2001:304).Ashurbanipal stabbing a lion with his sword.Nahum was keenly aware of the culture that he was writing to and was able to effectively use it to convey a powerful message from the LORD.Nineveh, a Bloody City (Na 3:1)Nahum pronounces: “woe to the bloody city (of Nineveh)” (3:1). The city and the Assyrian Empire had a well-earned reputation for being bloody. Just a casual glance at the reliefs from the palaces of Sennacherib and Ashurbanipal shows the “gory and bloodcurdling history as we know it” (Bleibtreu. 1991:52). There are reliefs with people being impaled, decapitated, flayed, and tongues pulled out. Other reliefs show the Assyrians making people grind the bones of their dead ancestors, and even vultures plucking out the eyes of the dead!One panel graphically shows their disrespect for human life. On it, a commander is presenting a bracelet to an Assyrian soldier who had decapitated the five or six heads at his feet. There are two scribes behind him recording the event. This bracelet, perhaps a medal of valor, is worth five or six lives! In Assyrian thinking, life was cheap.Countless Corpses (Na 3:3)There is an old adage that says, “What goes around, comes around.” The Bible would use an agricultural metaphor, “You reap what you sow” (cf. Gal 6:7). This is true in the geo-political realm as well as the personal realm. The Assyrians, over their long history, were brutal and barbaric people. Yet learn french
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